A legend in Japan, cult filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi (b.1938) launched his career in cinema with a series of avant-garde, small-gauge films whose daring visual style and free structure would inform his feature films. A friend and contemporary of luminary filmmaker Shuji Terayama, Obayashi shared his fellow radical’s distrust of the dominant culture, which he willfully subverted in his playful and indelible films. Obayashi made his feature debut with one of his greatest works, the truly unclassifiable Hausu, which could be called a slapstick horror comedy, a psychedelic coming-of-age story, a trance melodrama; with its recent US theatrical release, it has been confirmed as a cult masterpiece. The Harvard Film Archive is proud to welcome Nobuhiko Obayashi for a rare US visit.